Rebirth of America, this is my era

Chapter 242: Software is the light of the future, but hardware is the mother of survival

If Ethan's memory is correct, then Walkman must be the world's first personal portable tape player. Just like computers with spreadsheets, after the advent of Walkman, human lifestyles have undergone tremendous changes.

Because it replaced the record player and allowed people to carry music with them.

To be honest, no fancy words can describe these products that changed the world, because they are great enough. The reason why Ethan was excited was not because Sony would soon have an extra cash cow, but because in his memory, Sony's Walkman tape player and Discman disc player were launched almost at the same time.

After deciding to do optical storage, Ethan sorted out the memories in his head, and then found a very interesting conversation -

When he was studying in his previous life, he once took his New Year's money to a music store to buy a Walkman. When the owner noticed him lingering in front of the shelf and having difficulty making a choice, he took the initiative to introduce to him the differences between the various products.

"Young man, Sony's Walkman is the best-selling product in our store because it is very fashionable and cool. Just tie it on your arm and you will become the most handsome guy in the school."

This description made Ethan very excited. At the same time, he didn't understand why tying a Walkman to his arm would attract the attention of everyone in the school. When he asked what he was thinking...

The boss immediately laughed and replied, "Young man, because you are very brave!"

"When the principal issued a notice prohibiting Walkmans from entering the school, and the teacher stressed that pop music is a cancer, if you dare to tie a Walkman worth hundreds of yuan to your arm and walk around the campus, then you must be this!"

The boss gave Ethan a thumbs up.

Ethan, who was confused by him, had his mouth twitching.

The speechless look made the boss laugh, and he also introduced the product seriously, "Young man, Sony's Walkman is indeed the best-selling product here, because it is so convenient. Even if you wear jeans, you can put it in your pocket. But to be honest, its sound quality is average."

"If you want something better, I suggest you buy the Discman because it has better playback quality. Even Sony itself admits in its promotion that the Discman is high-fidelity. It is also a complementary product to the Walkman, which was launched at the same time. Its feature is good sound quality."

Yes.

Ethan learned the word high-fidelity from the owner of a video store.

Of course, he admitted, he couldn't tell the effect.

As far as I can remember, the news that Walkman and Discman were launched at the same time also came from each other.

There's nothing we can do about it, it's because he doesn't have a system.

When traveling through time, the brain was not transformed and did not contain an all-knowing Wikipedia.

Therefore, Ethan actually didn't know whether the news was right or wrong, but the truth of the news was no longer important to him now. If he was just a spectator, he could be entangled, but since he had already joined the game...

Even if Sony wasn't developing the Discman, Ethan would have thought they were.

And now that Sony has a product available soon...

"This is a serious situation!"

Ethan cursed in his heart.

He had a feeling that he would be busy again.

"This is really not giving people a peaceful life at all!"

He sighed and continued reading.

In addition to TCM-100, Sony also launched a new product last year, which is an -pixel CCD image sensor, but this thing has nothing to do with Ethan.

There is a saying that goes, there is no era of someone, there is only someone under the era. No matter how greedy Ethan is, he can't monopolize all the opportunities. He is satisfied to build a moat for his own company. As for the rest? He won't force it.

Especially since he doesn't understand technology.

Put down the second book and pick up the third one.

The word Toshiba on the document made Ethan feel a little strange.

Because this company was not within the scope of his observation. At the same time, his Destiny Game, Apple, Microsoft, and Western Design Company, which were related to him, did not seem to have any business conflicts with Toshiba.

When he expressed his doubts, Julis also said: "Boss, although you didn't let me pay attention to this company, this company launched a very excellent product last year."

“Personally, I think it will have an impact on us.”

This judgment aroused Ethan's curiosity, and he decisively opened the file. Then, his pupils suddenly shrank!
The information Julis brought came from September 10th of last year, when Toshiba launched the world's first Japanese word processor, code-named JW-.

Although this machine weighs 220 kilograms and costs 6.3 million yen, making it a product that is destined not to be widely popular, Toshiba says they have taken the first revolutionary step because they have taught the machine to learn Chinese characters and kana.

Before 1978, all computers displayed English content, which was a huge barrier to use for people who did not understand English. In addition, there were many words and phrases in Japanese and English that could not be directly translated. For example, the English word "I will reply" might be translated into "I will reply" in Japanese, because the word "reply" in Japanese means "answer" or "respond". Therefore, if the translation problem could not be solved, countless Japanese people would be eliminated by the times.

In order to solve this problem, Toshiba invented JW-10. They implanted the unique syntactic analysis and lexical analysis of Japanese into the machine. To put it simply, they "taught" Japanese grammar to the word processor, solving the conversion barrier from English to Japanese from the root.

This behavior seems to have nothing to do with Ethan, because the company under Ethan's name does not do business with Japanese processors, but in the future... no one can say whether Toshiba will produce something else.

"Boss, I didn't want to report this to you, but the Excel product makes me feel it's necessary to report Toshiba's R&D situation to you."

"Because they can release JW-10 today and sell electronic documents to major companies in Japan, then tomorrow they may also release their own Excel and make computers popular in the country."

"If the Microsoft you invested in only has North America in mind, then Toshiba's invention definitely has nothing to do with us, but... I believe this kind of thing is impossible, right? Because we have already sold the game to Japanese three years ago, and no one can refuse a market with a population of over 100 million."

"Moreover, all the components in this product are developed by Toshiba itself. The CPU, ROM, and RAM are all Toshiba's own products. Even if we send the 6502 to Nintendo, Toshiba has no intention of adopting it. This is a very scary thing."

Julis looked at Ethan with a serious expression.

Ethan understood the meaning of her words and nodded, "I know."

Ethan closed the file and said, "I'll take these materials, thank you."

"Scope of duties." Julis pursed her lips and asked, "Then after that..."

"You can call me directly for this kind of thing."

"Okay~"

"Then, your salary this year will increase by 15%. Also, all your expenses on the notebook will be reimbursed by the company, so...if you can avoid using Nintendo, then don't use Nintendo, okay?"

"Okay." Ethan's words made Julis laugh.

He even assured her: "Boss, don't worry, I won't be bribed by Yamauchi Hiroshi..."

In addition to Nintendo, Sony and Toshiba, the documents Evelyn brought this time also included news about Honda Electric, Sharp and other companies. If the previous news was not very pleasant, then now the announcements of these two companies are somewhat exciting.

After cooperating with Nintendo many times, Benzi Electric, which recognized the 6502 chip, decided to use the chip to produce a batch of personal computers, which were officially released to the public this year, that is, in .

This move will enable 6502 to achieve further expansion in the notebook and gain more market share.

At the same time, they also got in touch with Microsoft and purchased the computer language written by the other party.

Yes, Microsoft has gone overseas.

When he saw this, Ethan himself was shocked!

When he raised his head and cast a puzzled look at Julis, Julis also smiled and said that all this was true. More importantly, Benzi Electronics' decision was made before Excel was released.

This fact left Ethan speechless.

"Why?" He didn't understand.

“Maybe Microsoft’s products are better?” Julis didn’t know the answer either.

Since he had no clue, Ethan decided to take some time to ask Bill Gates directly.

Let go of this matter and look at Sharp.

This company, which is about the same size as Sony, is going after its peers.

They decided to release a series of magnetic cassette recording products this year.

Although Ethan understood that Sharp's move was no threat to Sony, because in his memory, Sony had beaten all its competitors in the field of portable players until Jobs returned to Apple and launched the iPod, which brought music into the digital age, but...

Akio Morita did not have the third eye!
So, after Sharp announced its future plans, Sony Group was indeed a little panicked.

In an interview with a reporter, they said that they have a big lead in the field of cassette tapes, they are not afraid of competition, and welcome other companies to join in, study together, and make progress together...

After seeing Julis off, Ethan leaned on the sofa and felt a little emotional. The speed of information transmission in this era is really too slow, and the major media are too stingy in reporting foreign news.

Sony is about to release a walkie-talkie, but there isn't even a whiz in North America?

Is this arrogance? Or is it arrogance?

If Ethan wanted to start a media company before when Daizong and Renzong were competing for the election, because of the biased behavior of various newspapers and radio stations, he really couldn't stand the information cocoon-like environment now.

It’s a pity that now is not the time for mixed operations.

Not only is there not enough money, but there is also not enough energy.

Otherwise, he would definitely call Ballmer and ask the big bald guy to help him buy an ABC.

Then, while he was leaning on the sofa and shaking his legs, the TV station came on.

Hehe ~
After thinking about it for a while, Ethan finally got up and went into his sister's office. When he found out that Sony's optical disc was about to be released, he wanted to know how their own optical storage research was going. Evelyn didn't know how to answer this question.

"Although Robert Hall gives me the R&D report every month, you need to go to the site to see the specific situation. He doesn't know how to describe the current R&D status to you, and I can't summarize his report and tell you the reason for this situation..."

"Very complicated."

Ethan frowned at his sister's words.

He really didn't understand now, is there anything in this world that Evelin couldn't summarize?

When he and his sister arrived at General Laboratories in Los Angeles on a chartered plane, Robert Hall, an expert in the eyes of the public and a brat in the eyes of Fred Terman, showed them his research.

Then--

Ethan was shocked.

What caught my eye was a box the size of a shoulder-mounted player, with a pitch-black speaker on each side of the box, about the size of a human head. In the middle of the two speakers was an embedded CD slot. As for the size, it was about four and a half inches?

Such a huge object made Ethan's eyelids jump, because he clearly remembered that he had told Robert Hall what he wanted. What he wanted was a palm-sized CD player, but now...

Is this box-like player intended for him to perform the role of a black man carrying a coffin on the street?
Just as he was about to question it, the old man Robert Hall took out a CD without any label and directly inserted it into the embedded slot of the box. He pressed the red button on the machine, and the next second, a melodious music sounded from the speaker.

Ethan admitted that he didn't understand music at all and he couldn't tell the quality of sound. So when the music started, his first reaction was that this thing worked, because the sound he heard was almost the same as the sound coming out of the speakers on the street. But his second reaction was that the project was a failure.

Because Robert Hall spent so much time researching and finally came up with a product that can be seen everywhere on the street! If this is the only result after waiting for several years and spending millions, then...

He even invested in shit!
As if he could see Ethan's surprise and confusion, Robert Hall turned the knob on the machine and turned the volume to the maximum. After one song ended, another one started. After listening to three songs, the old man turned off the machine and asked Ethan if he had any discoveries.

This question made Ethan turn his head decisively, "No."

"Hahahaha——" The neat and tidy answer made Robert Hall laugh.

"Okay, okay, I won't embarrass you anymore."

Robert Hall turned his gaze to Evelyn and asked, "Did you find anything?"

"Yes." Evelyn nodded, "It doesn't seem to make any noise."

"?" Ethan didn't understand.

Robert Hall laughed and clapped his hands, saying, "Yes, it has no noise."

While speaking, he took out another CD and put it into another small box. Compared with the music player, this box suddenly became much slimmer, and there was a black wire behind his butt, which was connected to a Sony TV.

Repeat the operation, turn on the TV, and then the Universal logo appears on the screen, and "Jaws" directed by Spielberg is presented to everyone.

Ethan didn't understand why the old man wanted to show him Jaws, but he still patiently stared at the screen. After about five minutes, Robert Hall turned off the machine and took out a disc player that was already on the market. The machine was exactly the same as the Magnavox VH-8000 that Spielberg had given Ethan before. He inserted the disc with the Jaws logo and played it again. Then -

Ethan discovered something unusual.

While watching discs on the Magnavox VH-8000, a collaboration between Philips and MCA, the picture on the TV would occasionally have some issues, either trembling or being blurry for a second, then returning to normal.

Of course, these problems are not obvious.

If people are just leaning back on the sofa and enjoying themselves, they probably won't be able to detect it.

But when watching the disc using Robert Hall's machine, all the images were normal, and there was no jitter or blur within five minutes of viewing.

This situation made Ethan frown. He always felt that he had discovered something, but he didn't understand.

After noticing that Ethan stretched his neck as if he wanted to get into the TV to see if there was something wrong with the settings inside, Robert Hall immediately laughed and said, "It seems that you have discovered it?"

The next second, he answered his own question, "Yes, what you found is all my research for the past two years."

Robert Hall stood up, patted the big black box he developed, and said with joy: "The principle of optical storage is actually very simple, that is, using light to read or write data in the underlying optical medium, but the whole process, no company in the market can perfectly execute it."

"There are all sorts of problems with existing CD players on the market. Take the Philips and MCA players, for example. In their players, there is no mechanical contact between the optical pickup unit and the disc. The information on their discs is in the form of a spiral track consisting of a series of pits and flat areas called lands."

"In Philips' design, the length of the pits and land is a continuous variable. During operation, the laser beam in the machine scans the track. When the spot of the beam falls on the land, the light is almost completely reflected. Then, the light is detected by a photodiode."

"Ideally, the photodiode's output signal would be a fair representation of the original recorded signal. Unfortunately, this is rarely possible because there are always sources of error present on the disc."

"There are many sources of error, for example, small unwanted particles or air bubbles may appear on the disc during the copying process, which can cause errors when the laser reads the information."

"For example, fingerprints or scratches left on the plastic material due to improper operation during firing can cause the output signal of the photodiode to be different from the original record."

"It is precisely because of these accidents that people find that when they watch DVDs, the picture quality varies from good to bad."

“I can’t fix the improper operation, but I have solved the reading problem.”

"To solve this problem, I chose to modify the disc track from a continuous variable to a discrete variable, masked the read loss by replacing the detection, and stopped the output of the blank data layer."

“So you will find that when the music is switched, the noise of switching music disappears, and when watching the movie, the picture will not shake or be blurry.”

"So that means the research has been completed?" Ethan was a little excited.

“And this technology is different from Philips’?”

Although he didn't understand, he was deeply shocked.

Robert Hall's expression froze at those words which couldn't be more blunt.

He was telling the story happily, but in an instant he was filled with anger. But the next second, he became as wilted as an eggplant hit by frost.

Because he knew that no matter how loud the scolding was, it could not change the fact that Ethan was a layman.

He waved his hands, too lazy to say anything more.

And Evelyn smiled and said, “This is considered a success, but there is still some way to go before it can be listed.”

“Because now these machines are so big.”

“It takes time to compress.”

"As for your statement that the technology is different from Philips? That is indeed true."

"Although I don't understand optics, I know that there is only one way to change the track of the disc from a continuous variable to a discrete variable, and that is to change a different signal source."

"It is recorded in the technology disclosed by Philips and MCA. They use analog signals like those used in televisions. Because analog signals are continuous and have infinite values, the lengths of pits and land must be continuous in order to accurately express those values, but—"

“It’s different when we’re separated, right?”

"Robert?"

"Yes." Evelyn's words made Robert Hall breathe a sigh of relief. He smiled and said, "I tried to use binary instead, that is, 0 and 1, and it worked."

"Oh, 0 and 1?" Evelyn raised her voice, showing interest. "Isn't it much easier to burn a disc this way than using Philips? Because we only need to burn it once. The burned area is 1 or 0, and the unburned area can get the data by doing the opposite."

"Yes!" Robert Hall was very happy that someone understood him.

"This method greatly reduces our workload!"

No matter how hard they talked, Ethan couldn't get into it because he didn't understand.

Not to mention optics, even when it comes to physics, he knows nothing about it.

But this doesn't affect his mood.

When he learned that Robert Hall had achieved results, a smile appeared on his face.

Because this is a good thing!
This means that their home consoles will be able to use optical discs in the future!
This means that they no longer have to worry about the faces of those guys who sell storage!

This means that they can directly develop large-scale games once the optical disc technology matures!

And this is actually the benefit of mastering core technology!
When the computers that make games, the processors that support the running of games, and the storage devices that carry games are all in the hands of the game itself...

It doesn't matter even if other people have good ideas.

Because they can't do it.

Software is certainly the light of the future, but hardware is the mother of survival!

And do it with both hands?
"Hahahaha-"

After leaving the General Laboratory, Ethan got into the car and couldn't hold back any longer, and burst into laughter.

Evelyn was shocked by the neurotic behavior.

But after seeing Ethan covering his cheeks with excitement, she was too lazy to care.

Because after making "Starry Sky", she finally understood why Ethan insisted on developing optical storage. When the price of storage media on the market remains high, changing the perspective and thinking may indeed reduce costs, and of course, it may also be possible to gain more.

Ethan was very satisfied with Robert Hall's progress in optical storage research and development, and what satisfied him even more was the preparations for the video game-related competitions. Thanks to the efforts of Steve Ballmer, the big bald man, the event had two more sponsors.

One is from the Los Angeles Times and the other is from HP.

The former does not give sponsorship fees, but will report the progress of the competition to the outside world in real time. For example, the first round of auditions in California ended on a certain day, and someone created the best score on the spot and reached a certain level.

Due to limited newspaper space, they cannot report all the competitions on the North American continent, so except for places outside California, they only report on the ones with good results.

This behavior seems very simple, but——

It’s the first time, and no one is familiar with it. It’s enough to let the outside world have a dedicated channel to understand it. As for making it known to everyone like future e-sports competitions?
Forget it, there is no Internet in this era.

As for HP...

When Ethan saw the name, he was a little surprised.

Although he and the founder of HP had met once, at the launch of Pac-Man, they were not close friends and had no contact.

Now suddenly sponsoring?

"What's going on?" Ethan asked.

Ballmer responded: "They want to get into the personal computer industry."

"They're going to use 6502 and hopefully get Excel support."

"As for configuration, they will match Apple, but because of their late launch, they said they will not pose any threat to Apple for the time being."

"Oh——" Ethan understood.

In which year did HP officially enter the computer industry?

Ethan really doesn't know this.

But before he traveled through time, HP was the world's second largest personal computer seller.

Since HP sold computers in his previous life, it is not surprising that he chose to join the industry now. As for why he wanted to show his goodwill, the answer has already been given.

Excel represents productivity!
In this case--

"Okay, accept it."

He handed the document back.

Ballmer didn't leave.

"What? Is there anything else?" Ethan asked.

"Yes." Ballmer nodded honestly and said, "Boss, are you really not going to participate in the interview tomorrow?"

"What?" Ethan didn't understand.

"It's about announcing the game to the outside world," Ballmer said. "We will have a joint interview with the NFL, which is an exclusive interview with NBC. They will record a VCR for us and broadcast it at 8 p.m. Eastern Time on February 1."

"Oh, didn't I leave this matter to you?" Ethan remembered.

"But this is your company." Ballmer shrugged and looked at Ethan calmly. "Boss, I can stand on the stage of the press conference and introduce "Fat Man" and "Taken" to people, but I can't reveal "Snake 2" to them."

“Because the whole world knows that this is your work.”

“They are all your believers.”

Ethan was stunned for a moment by the cult-like speech, and then he did not know whether to laugh or cry.

"Oh - Steve - did you get hit by lightning in the head?"

"I'm running a company! I'm not doing pyramid selling, okay?"

"How can you talk about my press conference as if it were a mission?"

Having said that, Ethan still thinks what Ballmer said is correct.

After all, every top product manager is a missionary.

"Okay, do you have a manuscript? Let me take a look." Ethan didn't refuse.

"Here." Ballmer handed over the manuscript he had prepared long ago.

After taking a quick look, the formulaic questions and answers made him shake his head.

"That's it?!"

He threw the manuscript aside.

"This question-and-answer reveal you set up is really meaningless!"

"Well, I'll rewrite the script and record it tomorrow!"

"Go do something else now, bye!"

Note: ①TCM-100 is indeed a test version of Walkman, or in other words, Sony did not have much confidence in portable players at first, because music copyright was too troublesome, so they first launched a TCM-100 recording device to see if the public could accept this handheld player. 8000 units sold very well, so they struck while the iron was hot and launched Walkman, but even so, before it became a hit, Akio Morita positioned this product at 80 units in half a year. ②The personal computer launched by Honda Electric in 80 mentioned in the article was the first computer produced by Honda itself. Before that, it was imported or assembled with spare parts because they could not make CPUs. In reality, the PC-6502 launched by Honda Electric also uses Lao Mi chips, which are modified from Z. Z is the cheapest king on par with . ③It is true that Honda Electric uses Microsoft programming language. I am not bragging in the article, but Microsoft in reality is so awesome. Before taking on IBM's order, they had already gone overseas. ④The optical storage data in the article comes from Philips' own book, which talks about their contribution to the CD industry. ⑤HP did enter the market only after seeing the potential of computers to change the world, which wasted five years for them. ⑥There were MLMs in the United States after World War II, it's not a bug.



(End of this chapter)